Page 96 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
I take the stairs barefoot.
By the time I reach the front doors, Lucas is already through them, Monroe a pace behind. I follow them into the courtyard, and the cold hits me through my thin robe and nightgown. Floodlights have come on across the front of the estate, throwing everything into a harsh whiteness that makes even the grass look unnatural.
There’s a wolf on the gravel.
He is enormous, dark-furred, on his side, his ribs heaving. There’s blood on the stones around him. A lot of it. Two of the perimeter guards crouch beside him, and as I get closer, I watch as he shifts back. It’s a slow, painful unfolding, and the wolf finally becomes a man with a torn-open chest and a face I remember seeing on the briefing screen in Lucas’s office last week.
Task force. Bauer’s section.
Lucas drops to a knee beside him.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his hand at the back of the man’s neck. “Look at me. What happened?”
The shifter’s mouth drips blood from the corner of it. His eyes find Lucas and hold his gaze.
“Ambushed.” It comes out weakly. “Alpha…There’s an army. So many of them.” His hand twitches against the gravel. “We didn’t see them till they were on us. Bauer is—”
“Where?” Lucas presses, his voice low and steady. “Where were you?”
The man’s lips part, but no words come. His chest rises once more, slowly, and then never does again.
A hand finds my elbow. Monroe, his face pale. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
Lucas closes the man’s eyes with his thumbs. When he stands, the line of him has changed. There’s a stillness in his shoulders I have only seen in him once before, the day the rogues attacked our convoy. He turns to Monroe.
“Get me Liam and Reese. Now. And every team lead I have on this estate. My office in five.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Lucas’s eyes find mine across the gravel, and for a few seconds, he is just looking at me, taking me in—the robe and the bare feet and the way I have followed him out into the coldwithout thinking. Whatever he was about to tell me to do, he doesn’t.
He holds out his hand.
I cross to him. My palm slides into his, and we go inside together.
In his office, he doesn’t sit down. He goes straight to the communications panel on the far wall and starts working the keys before I have even closed the door behind us.
“What can I do?” I ask. I want to help.
“Nothing right now.” He doesn’t look up. His thumb is running across the frequency dial. “Stay near me.”
I sit on the edge of the leather couch by the window and watch as he starts opening channels.
“Bauer. Bauer, this is Steele. Respond.” A pause. “Bauer, respond.”
Static.
“Wren. Section two. This is Steele, respond.”
A burst of crackling, then a voice, breathless. “Alpha. Wren here. We’re at the eastern checkpoint. We just got the alert.”
“Status.”
“All twelve of us accounted for. Nothing unusual in our sector tonight.”
“Hold position. Don’t move until I tell you.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
